


Mad Baggins and his hidden chest

by NavyGreen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Gen, Mild Gore, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The One Ring is Bad News, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-18
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:47:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23198053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NavyGreen/pseuds/NavyGreen
Summary: Bilbo, after returning to the Shire, opens his secret chest and remembers the ornaments inside.
Kudos: 18





	Mad Baggins and his hidden chest

**Author's Note:**

> This work can be seen as a sequel to my other work, "There and...", but can be read separately. I hope you enjoy.

Mad Baggins.

Well, wouldn’t his mother be proud, Bilbo thought.

_It’s the Took in you_ , Belladona would say, frying pan raised high and ready to strike a phantom opponent.

_Imagine what your Aunts and Uncles would say!_ Bungo would add, scandalized. He would turn his face away, hide a smile with his hand, and remember his first adventures with Belladona with a fondness.

Bilbo glanced down the main hallway of their home. His home.

His parents couldn’t say anything, anymore.

Bilbo entered his study – his private abode, though young Frodo had increasingly attempted to enter unnoticed when Bilbo was occupied with translations.

But Frodo was asleep now, tucked into his bed, and dreaming.

The nickname – Mad Baggins – had popped up even before he arrived back from the East, he’d learnt. Bagginess didn’t just disappear with a company of Dwarves, with little more than a hurried note to the Gamgees to take care of his garden. Why, even Bungo had been nicknamed _Odd Baggins_ for the sole social crime of marrying a Took. But leaving the Shire, unannounced, with Dwarves, and reappearing little more than a year later with a sword?

Absolutely Mad.

But Bilbo had never been normal – even before he left for the Lonely Mountain.

The children didn’t avoid him – instead, they flocked to him in droves, tugging out stories and yarns that Bilbo spun willingly. He could almost consider himself the life of the party, with all his crowds and cheers. And with children came their parents. While some avoided him still, with sneers and whispers, most hobbits had accepted him as one of their own again, if a little odd. Besides, nicknames were harmless. Unless you were a Took, to which it was taken as a game to find the worst nickname. His Took cousins, while being the ones to accept him first and most willingly, had taken to calling him _Mad_ and _Wild_ and _Dwarven_ and _Magic Baggins_.

Really, how bad could _Mad Baggins_ be?

A small chest lay on one of his bookshelves’ higher ledges. Its wooden edges were inscribed with golden vines, weaving amongst each other and guarding the chest with its carved thorns. Its height kept itself safe from the small, curious hands of a hobbit child. And so it would remain, for its contents were for Bilbo’s eyes only.

The hobbit wrapped his fingers around its edges and pulled it from its hiding place. Unguided by candlelight, Bilbo set it on his desk, and sat, heavily, in his father’s ornate wooden chair.

Unlike the other ornaments of his journey, Sting – trusted Sting with its sharpened point and glowing warnings – remained in Bilbo’s bedroom to be used for dire emergencies (and for when the night grew dark, and little Frodo wished for protection from the monsters under his bed). All other treasures had remained in his mother’s chest, stolen away from prying eyes and dirty hands.

Bilbo lit the half-finished candle, and the tiny flame flickered for only a moment before shining strong and lighting the room in a dim orange haze.

The hobbit thumbed the lock, and the chest opened with barely a _click._

The contract lay closest to the lid, yellowed with age and scratched with black ink. Only the last name, written hastily on a dark line, showed itself to its owner. _Bilbo Baggins._

He had asked Balin for it, after the funeral and just before Spring’s warmth cleared the roads leading through the Misty Mountains. Bilbo could not stand to stay in the sunless, death-filled mountain another season. Ever practical, the Dwarves had written a copy of the contract, for whatever reasons they would see fit. It had been good enough, back then, when Balin had told him he could not hand over the original – it was too valuable to the Dwarves of Erebor. A token of the Company and their leader’s heroic and courageous journey to reclaim their homeland. How could Bilbo have taken that? He was a burglar, but he was no heartless thief.

So he took the copy, and fled.

Bilbo had stared, read, and counted its signatures an unimaginable amount of times during the journey home. It had breathed warmth into the furnace of his heart, stirring the scattered coals and broken logs, even when he had returned to Bag End to find it rummaged and empty.

Now, it felt like the hollow copy it was. _It would be better to burn it_ , he thought briefly.

But he could not find the courage in himself to do it.

Removing the contract, and folding it carefully away from the candle, linked chains of mithril glittered in the light.

Bilbo pulled it out slowly, watched as the silver circles quietly clinked together. Despite holding it up high, the chainmail still creased over itself across his knees.

Balin had told him the chainmail could have bought all the Shire, many times over. All the pots and jewellery and generational hobbit holes. And while Bilbo believed him, he knew a fair few hobbits who wouldn’t give up their family recipes even with the threat of death – not that it had ever come to that. Not for them.

What was a mithril shirt to a simple hobbit anyway? A cold, holey shirt that couldn’t keep you warm. And it wasn’t like a hobbit would need it for protection – the most dangerous thing that had happened in the last century had been the controversial awarding of the Pumpkin Competition from the decade before. _At least Lobelia hadn't won_ , Bilbo thought to himself and crinkled his nose. Now wouldn’t that cause a skirmish. Though, she was entering the Tomato Competition that year, and from the glances into her garden on the way to the market, she (as much as Bilbo regretted to admit it) had a fighting chance. Surely not by her black fingers. Her more gifted – and manipulatable – cousins must have helped her.

Perhaps he should wear the mithril under his waistcoat the day of the competition, in case the outcome turned unfavourable. It would be for the best. A hobbit couldn’t throw a tomato any harder than Fili or Kili could throw bread, but that didn’t mean Bilbo wanted a bruise when he could prevent it.

Bilbo folded the chainmail and set it by the candle.

The map sat close to the bottom of the chest. A red illustration met Bilbo – nothing like the Dragon Dread the hobbit had actually encountered. This dragon was all flat, with smooth edges and lacking the ability to pain Bilbo with anything more than a papercut.

Smaug the Golden, Smaug the Terrible, still haunted him in his sleeping hours. It was worse after Bard had slain it, but before the Battle, when gold madness had turned the Mountain and the Dwarves within it sour. Then, dragons and Dwarves would chase after Bilbo in his dreams, teeth and swords drawn, ready to cut him down for his daring.

When Bilbo had woken, the dragons had disappeared, but the gold madness did not.

He still dreamt of it, here in his safe hobbit-hole, leagues from the Mountain. He woke in a sweat, with Sting ready in his hand and pointing at a phantom foe at the end of his bed. It didn’t glow blue. It never did, here in the Shire.

Sometimes, the roars and giant eye and broken scales of his dreams did drive Bilbo mad. Sometimes, Bilbo wasn’t sure if he had ever regained his sanity after watching mountains of golden coins roll off the dragons jagged, scaly hide. If he had ever regained it after Raven Hill.

For a moment, for just a brief moment, Bilbo forgot what lay on the bottom of the chest, and tugged the map out to set it away. He turned it over, hiding the dragon from view and rendering harmless, if only until he dreamt next.

While the dragon was contained to his dreams, _the ring_ was not.

It sat in the darkened depths of the chest, its rounded and smooth edges reflecting a beckoning light.

Bilbo had not meant to uncover it – and with its newfound freedom unleashed images of deep, wet caves, a pale, skeletal creature with bugged eyes and hoarse voice, and a great, growing darkness ruled over by a burning eye.

He saw fields burning, hobbits chained and Dwarves slaughtered. He saw Elves with their glowing swords lay harmless on a bloodied field. He saw a great, white mountain city, a silent swamp, a great river, and little Frodo, wrecked with sweat, cuts, and bruises, dangling the ring above a glowing, heated crevice.

It burned into his mind, blackening and curling its edges. For a brief moment that lasted seasons, his head boiled with heat, wracking itself into a bruised and bloodied mess-

He blinked. And it all disappeared. Like mist on a windy, Winter’s morn.

The room, free from bodies and heat, felt cold, and empty.

Bilbo glanced down at the ring. It beckoned him still, with sweet melodies sung around the fire and rough hugs from those firmer and tall than he. The ring whispered to him of faraway places, distant mountains and bearded smiles. It showed him a garden atop a mountain, of food and drink aplenty on stone-carven tables. It sang to him the melancholy tunes of a harp.

The ring promised it could make it all true.

And all Bilbo had to do was _listen_.

But Bilbo Baggins was not Mad Baggins for nothing. He was Barrel Rider, the Fly who Stings the Spider, and the Lucky Number. With a mental force he had only mustered once before, atop a snowy battlement and in front of an army of Elves and Men, he shoved the map, the contract and the mithril chainmail over the ring, hiding it from sight. He heard the aged paper crinkle – but thankfully not _rip_ – and he shut the chest with a loud thump.

He paused. And listened to the silence of Bag End. Waiting.

But no footsteps of an awoken and curious tween came to meet him.

Bilbo stood, suddenly feeling the pains of wounds long healed, and shoved the chest onto the highest shelf. It rested against the wall; yearning to be opened once more. The hobbit snatched books of Silvan grammar from their ordered places and used them to entomb the chest in a papery crypt.

A weak prison. But it would do.

The gentle, melodic beckoning had lessened. But it still slithered up his spine, pricking at his mind with hot needles, barely softer than a memory.

Bilbo left the room, unwilling to recognize the tears in his eyes or the pain in his chest. The hollowness of longing that wracked his bones and spread him thin.

By Yavanna and all the Valar, let Frodo _never_ find that chest.


End file.
